23 March 2024 – Syracuse

Miles driven today = 31

Total Miles to date = 2,674

We’ve had a few unwelcome guests in the van over the last few evenings.  The top of my shiny head is generally the only thing that protrudes from under the duvet at night and it is now covered in at least 8 mozzie bites, giving me a slightly alien appearance.  Lisa has also got one on her eyelid which is giving her a slightly lopsided look.  I think we’ve swatted the offending little blighters but we are being a lot more circumspect with keeping the fly screens closed now.

Anyway, Syracuse.  It took us a lot longer to figure out how the car park ticket machine worked this morning than it did to drive there from the campsite but we finally got it to accept €4:50 in cash in exchange for a ticket for 3 hours’ parking.

The Greeks first settled here in 733 BC.  The offshore island of Ortigia was easily defended and the surrounding fertile lands and natural harbours allowed the City to quickly grow, becoming so powerful that in 415 BC Athens sent a fleet to take the City and sort out these upstarts.  They failed.  The fleet was destroyed and the survivors enslaved.

At only 1km long and 500 metres wide Ortigia is a nicely walkable, bite-sized city so we decided to concentrate our sightseeing there.  The island is approached via two bridges.  This is Ponte Umbertino, which is built on the foundations of a Roman Bridge.  

Half way across, the bridge crosses a small island where this statue of Archimedes stands.  Syracuse was attacked by the Romans in 215 BC.  They laid siege to Ortigia for two years and were held at bay largely by some of the mechanical weapons of War invented by Archimedes.  He was killed by a Roman soldier when the City was finally taken.

As is tradition, our first port of call was the market.  Lisa made a bee line for the spice stall.  Our cumin supply in the van is running low and the supermarkets don’t seem to stock it.  They had a bucketful of it here.

Strawberry Season is already well under way here.  We’ve bought several punnets since we have been here.

I didn’t get shouted at for taking photos in the fish stall today, which was a bonus.

The Temple of Apollo was built in 570 BC and was the first Doric Temple to be built on Sicily.  All that is left here now are a few stunted pillars and a small piece of the inner sanctuary wall.

The Fountain of Diana looks lovely but I was a little disappointed to find out it was created as recently as 1907 and is predominantly made of concrete.

The imposing façade of the Church of Collegio dei Gesuiti.

Ceramic heads of Medusa and Saracen looking gentlemen are very common in Sicilian gift shops.

These ceramic pine cones are also ubiquitous.  They have fertility connotations and historically were given to newly-wed couples, but are also displayed in people’s homes simply as a gesture of welcome.  No butt plug gags please!

We followed some narrow streets which suddenly opened out into the Piazza del Duomo with the Palazzo Beneventano Del Bosco on the left and the Palazzo del Vermexio on the right.

The Duomo itself is a real mixture of architecture.  The castellated wall to the left is Norman but the façade which went with it was destroyed in the 1693 earthquake and replaced by the Baroque design we see today.

However, inside we can see that the whole building was created around the Greek Temple of Athena from the 5th Century BC and 12 columns from the original temple are still embedded in the walls.  Some of these were distorted by the earthquake but somehow the building survived.

The Cathedral altar with assorted religious artwork.

The beautifully painted ceiling in one of the side chapels.

A Section of Mosaic flooring from the Norman period.

The patron saint of Syracuse is St Lucia who came from the town and was martyred in 304 AD.  This is supposed to be her dress.  I’m a little skeptical to put it mildly.

This glorified duck pond is the fresh water Aretusa Spring around which a whole Greek legend came into being.

We continued along the Western waterfront and it was refreshing to see more restaurants actually open for business than not.  With Easter just around the corner I’m hoping that the places we visit over the coming weeks won’t be quite as deserted as they have been for the first half of the trip.

At the very Southern tip of Ortigia is the Castello Maniace, which was built by Frederick II in 1239.  In the past the whole island was fortified but most of the defensive walls were removed in the 19th Century.

Another sculpture by that Mitoraj chap.  This one presumably representing Icarus in some way.

The sea wall on the Eastern facing side of the island.

We wandered back through some of the less well trodden streets of Ortigia and picked up a sandwich at one of the Rough Guide’s recommended establishments in the market before heading back to the van.  There’s an awful lot more to see in Syracuse, including a 15,000 seater Greek Theatre but we were hot and, being a weekend, we envisaged crowds like we encountered last Sunday at the Valley of the Temples, so we decided to move along.

I picked out a little Sosta for tonight a bit further up the coast.  It’s not much to write home about seeing as it’s not much more than a gravel parking lot beside a motorhome repair shop.  But we have hook up and waste water disposal and the owner is a friendly guy.  We tried to make our way to the beach but all the paths in that direction were either gated or blocked with overgrown fly-tipping so we drove into the nearby small resort of Agnone instead.

I don’t think this is actually a turtle nesting area and it’s not the most heavily littered beach we have seen but the appeal still seems to fall on far too many deaf ears.

With a stiff breeze the kite surfers were certainly enjoying the conditions.

Agnone is at the Southern end of a 20km stretch of beach, leading all the way to Sicily’s second town of Catania, which you can see in the distance.  Beyond that you can make out the lower slopes of Mount Etna, with its head in the clouds.  That’s where we shall be heading tomorrow.  It’s going to be chilly up there but I can’t wait!

One final little bit of excitement today.  I had read that there are storks nesting around here and we spotted a nest on a nearby pylon earlier this afternoon.  The sun had already set and we were in the process of closing everything down for the night when Lisa spotted that the nest was occupied so we had a quick squint at our first Sicilian stork through the binoculars as the light began to fade.

24 March 2024 - Mount Etna